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Monday, August 13, 2012

Crazy creative people, and a wedding!

I know. It's been a long while since I last posted. But try as I might, I have been so preoccupied with other things that my blog went onto my back list of to do's.

I'm sitting here, listening to my noisy air conditioner, feeling a wee bit wilted. The air is hot, muggy, humid, and sticky.

Actually, I'm sticky and stinky.
I put vanilla under my armpits to see if that would make them smell nice. They smelled nice for about a minute. Then I went outside to do some heavy duty hula hooping. It was so hot, I had to stop. Now I smell like a skunk, that might have smelled like vanilla at one time.

Also, note to self, never put peppermint oil under your armpits. It burns like a swearword.

Hmmm...hmmm...hmmm. I'm just in one of those hot, muggy moods. Not a bad mood, mind you. Just a muggy one. One that feels a little bored with oneself, and is itching for a new adventure.

I'm not sure what kind of adventure, but a good one.

My sister's wedding, was on the 28th.
I can't believe it's come and past. I'm just a little shell shocked. My sister is married! It's crazy. Awe.
Thus the wheel of time turns, and change happens. I hope that my sister will be happy. I hope they both will.

What a lot of work goes into a wedding. We are still finding odds and ends to clean up after our magnum-opus.

It seems like my summer has been eaten up by this wedding, and everything had been put on hold. (Not that that's a bad thing) Now that it's over. I'm getting back into doing a few things for myself---like write, edit, and write. I love writing, but sometimes it sure is hard to keep up the self discipline to finish what I started.

There. I said it.

Because I'm proud of all the work that went into my sister's wedding I'm going to grace you with a crazy list of things we did to make it all work.

Why would a wedding take so much work? Well, because we did pretty much everything ourselves. Crazy. Yes. Creative, you bet.

I shall list the things we made so you can get full comprehension of what went into this.

My mom made the wedding veil. But she just didn't make it. She made it over about a million times because it had to be just so for my sister.

I'll post the picture I took on the wedding day so you can best appreciate it. :)
Isn't it pretty?

We had a country wedding reception, so my mom made all the grand kids (girls) aprons.
She also decorated some straw hats, for both the boys and girls to wear.

(Picture of the aprons and my cute nieces below) Note that all my many (I lost count) nieces and nephews are not in this picture.

What else did we make? Well, prior to the wedding, my sister, and I made about a bazillion small cheesecake cupcakes. Note, that if you ever want to do this for a special occasion that it will be a lot of work. We used cookie dough for the bottom of the cheesecakes, and topped them with fresh raspberries, and other such fruits.

If I had the desire, I could tell you a long story about the heartache of making these. But I will skip it. Instead, you can drool over their scrumptious pictures.

My mom also made lemon bread, caramel filled cookie things. Not to mention we had ham, cheese, crackers, and veggie trays.

Oh, and let's not forget the punch.

And the fact that we also had cake pops, and fancy cupcakes (But the grooms mother made these) I'm not sure if I got a picture of the cake pops.

Yeah, I'm making you hungry aren't I? I'm making me hungry. Hence the fact that they no longer exist.

I have pictures of the making of a lot of the wedding projects. But alas, I don't really want to go through the work of resizing them in order to post them.

It would give me some amount of pleasure to post all the pictures of nitty gritty work that went into everything. But like I said. I'm too lethargic to do so. If my computer didn't take so long loading the pic, and if I didn't have to resize them, I would. But I'm not.

Also, my sister made the wedding cake. I'm proud to say I helped in this project as well. Yes. Crazy.
On the morning of the wedding, my sister and I had to decorate it, then get our butts over to the wedding for pictures.

We had a fun time making the fondant-cloth folds. Also, when we got back from the wedding, we had to rush to get the cake to the church. This almost turned into disaster because I was driving a little too fast, and nearly launched the cake. Not that I was driving fast, fast. It was just that I didn't slow down gradually enough to make a turn. The cake was in the back of the van, and sort of slid, squishing a bit of the frosting. After that, my sister sat in the back of the van, holding the cake from slipping. That really stressed me out. I was so worried that I ruined our masterpiece. But, it arrived in one piece, not too worse for wear.

Here's a pic. Note that the cake topper was pretty boring. So my mom chopped off the original bride's veil, and redid it. Also, my sister wanted the groom to wear a cowboy hat. But this was a problem as its head was too small.

We couldn't find any store-bought mini cowboy hats that would fit it. So, the my sister, made a paper cowboy hat. But it looked silly. So after about a million different tries. Bess, my other sister, made the hat, first out of fondant. But the fondant wasn't stiff enough. So she made one out of clay. Yes, we are crazy. Why in the world didn't we just buy a topper that was cow-boy style?
I'll tell you why. Because...I'm not sure.

I do know that my mom was helpful and ordered a topper my sister didn't want. So she canceled the order, and they ordered a heart-shaped one, with two cowboy hats at the bottom. When it arrived, nobody liked it. So we used the one we had already. Oh yes, another thing. My sister, the bride, also wove strands of string round the cake topper, to look like cowboy rope.

I can't believe we did all this for a cake topper! But that is the story of this wedding. Creative people can see a million ways to do something that would take a normal person pull out their hair in frustration.

Let's see, what else did we do? Oh, too much.
My sister decided it would save money if we ordered all the flowers for the buttoneers, bride's maids, and her bouquet, etc. Then make them all ourselves. The day before the wedding came, our house was not only a cake shop, but a florist shop as well. We had to clean out all the food out of one of our fridges, turn on the air conditioner, and commence with making arrangements. My sister in law helped. But on the day of the wedding, we found that our fridge was too cold and froze a lot of the flowers. It was a sad deal. However, everyone rallied together, helpful hands were able to replace the flowers that had wilted with extra flowers that had not been put in the fridge. So it was not so bad after all.

Also my sister, my mom and I made the backdrop out of old carpet rolls, wood, paint, glue, and a lot of time and patience. If you're curious how we made them, ask, and I might do a how-to post. But for now, I'll just show you the end result, as it is too much work to explain how we did it all.

This backdrop was a lot more work than we first supposed. I'm super proud of it.

What else? Oh yes, prior to the wedding we decided that grain would be a fun addition to the decorations. So we spent a lot of time, out in the hot sun, clipping grain from my dad's field. We got a ton of it and stored it in a little shed until the wedding. The end result was really pretty, but it was so messy, so itchy, and a pain to transport, I'm not sure it was such a grand idea.

It was funny because we wanted to decorate the hall a few days before the wedding, so we spent the morning getting all the wedding decorations together, and then hauled them up to the building. Once we got there we found out, to our dismay, that a funeral was going to be going on in the building. Nobody had told us. So we had to unload all our stuff into a few rooms located outside of the hall, and wait until the afternoon the next day before we could decorate. That was stressful as well. But with the help of all my family, we got it done. We were all exhausted, and tired. But it was fun being able to be with family, to create something beautiful.

What else? Oh yes. My sister, the bride, got old lassos from her intended, and chopped them up. Then she wound them around flower containers. They looked pretty nifty. Also she used old boots to put flowers in.

Oh, and another thing I thought was nifty. My niece made a clay figurine of the bride and groom. I thought it very cute.

There were many more little details that made the wedding go very nice. But I'm not really going to go into detail as you are probably getting bored.

I'm going to suffice it to say that it was very nice. We had good times, and interesting times. But---I'm glad it's over with.

Here are some more pictures I took of the bride and groom. I would put more pictures on here, but I'm going to go foraging for something to eat. Ha. Take care. I'm signing out. I will post more in the future. Maybe I'll even post my updated book cover for my next book.

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About Me

I'm
a free spirit who loves life, good food, warm souls, long walks, and
being authentically creative. I view life a rare gift that should be
cherished, remembered and experienced. You never know what tomorrow will
bring, so why not devote our lives to the small beautiful things that
make our souls sing? That's the main reason why I believe photography,
painting, writing, music, and art in all its forms is so necessary.
Without them, life would be soulless.

I'm a Writer, landscaper, explorer, singer, musician, friend, doctor,
athlete, cowgirl, mosquito masher, treasure finder, councilor,
accidental comedian, dreamer, cheese cake tester, janitor, author,
repair woman, artist, website builder, psychologist, theologian, sales
person, sister, aunt, daughter, grandchild, entertainer, warrior, change
agent, dancer, therapist, teacher.
I'm a author who enjoys spinning tales and making heroes out of ordinary
men and woman. I'm a author/artist/Adventurer in all new and good
things. I've got many dreams/goals aspirations.
I love playing Frisbee, a good laugh, smashing moths, righting the
injustices of the world, finding new ways to make ordinary things not so
ordinary. I love hoop dancing. If you don't know what that is, ask me
and I'll be glad to tell you.
I love thunderstorms, you know, the kind when the power goes out and you
have to go get the candles.

I take a lot of pictures---just ask my family. Wherever I go, I
have my camera. I think it's fascinating to be able to see something
beautiful, to capture it for one small moment before it vanishes, like a
firefly, so you can show others what you saw. It's like magic. You can
take something very ordinary and bring it into focus----and make it
extraordinary. That's what creatives do. We are alchemist of art, and
bring into focus that which others may not see.
I like to do many different things so long as it's interesting, and
I'm learning something new. I know my spirit would dry up and blow away
if I couldn't be creating something.

I'm along with being an author, I blog a lot, and write young adult books, and illustrate
them. I love molding words into pictures, and feelings. It's a wonderful
outlet for me to think on paper. I also oil paint, draw, and experiment
with a lot of different mediums. I like to use unusual canvases as to
paint on---like old rusty metal, reclaimed wood, and anything else that
looks like it would make good art.

I'm interested in health, art, improving myself, learning new things, living abundantly, meeting new people, trying new flavors, movies, books, politics, mental health, cooking, new ideas, connecting, living authentically, psychology, and everything in between, so long as it's interesting. As a member of the guild of artists, lets help each other out,
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